It pretty much depends on the bit rate of the mp3 file, a while ago it was 128 kbit but now its more like 192 kbit. With 128 kbit, the rough idea is that 1 minute = 1 mb, so with 256 mb you should have room for 256 mins aka roughly 60-70 songs.

Thanks guys for the quick replies. I was actually thinking of buying a MP3 player since I dropped my discman on the floor this weekend. Do you have any good suggestions as well? I was thinking about buying a IOPS MFP-325. But if you have any better suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

It very much depends on how you´re listening to music. If you´ve got only very few titles you ever want to listen to and you don´t change those often, a memory stick device might be okay.

If you´ve got a larger library and/or you want to change your portable music on a whim, a harddisk-based player is much better suited for you.

If the player can hold all your music, the computer interface doesn´t matter very much: You only need to transfer it once. USB might be enough in that case. (It can take hours with many players to transfer a larger number of titles!)

If your player can´t hold all your music and you still want to change your music often, there´s no alternative to a harddisk-based player with a FireWire connection. It´s at least twice as fast as even an USB2 connection (even though the theoretical numbers wouldn´t indicate it).

You should also look at the music software that will serve the player. There are huge differences in usability and reliability. In addition, if you want to buy music online, you´ll have to check which players will play protected music. Protected music from the iTunes music store, for instance, can only be played with iTunes and with the iPod.